IN HINDSIGHT   by an Indo-German newspaper columnist

At Halloween, people often tell scary stories or try and frighten each other. But truth is scarier than fiction: on Halloween Day this year–last Monday–the population of the earth officially reached seven billion. (That’s nowhere near as many as McDonald’s claims to have served, but it’s still a lot.)

7,000,000,000 people may not seem like much to you–after all, that number consists mostly of zeros–but look at it this way: if they stood on each other’s shoulders (assuming the ones below weren’t flattened like pancakes and the ones above didn’t blow up like balloons in the vacuum of space) they would form a pillar 25 times the height of the moon.

But even this desperate act wouldn’t succeed in raising their level of living, literally of figuratively. When the new millennium was dawning, a lot of pundits were confident that the advance of science would lift people out of poverty despite their rising numbers, eliminate hunger, and give most of us a higher quality of life. A decade later, there are a billion hungry humans in the world. There is now less optimism that our towering ambitions can be met.

Yet every crowd has a silver lining (and empty space some comet’s tails as well). The fact that it took us 12 years to jump from six to seven billion means global population growth is slowing down. The next increase, to eight billion, is expected to take at least 13 years. Big effing deal, you might say–but consider that a few decades ago it had been thought there would be no slowdown before we reached at least 12 billion!

Admittedly, this slowdown is too slow. At present there are shortages of arable land, drinking water and other natural resources. Food stocks have subsided while prices have skyrocketed.

So, as science isn’t working–or there are just too many idiots being born who have no use for it–we must focus on population control. The quickest solution would be for people to stop having sex. But that would leave most of us with no purpose for living; so we should at least plan our families. For this it’s essential that women be educated and empowered to decide how many children to have–a decision most woman today aren’t free to make. Women should not be treated like vassals or storage vessels.

Drastic steps like forced sterilization in India in the 1970s (or zapping female babies these days) are not the solution; while China’s one-child policy won’t work in a democracy–and would create serious imbalances between the active and retired populations. Education is the answer. (More so if one listens when the teacher says “Stop f***ing around and start studying!”)

Of course, there are those who believe every single life is precious, and each additional billion worth its weight in bullion, and so on. If they had their way, then standing on each other’s shoulders might no longer be a matter of choice.

[In Hindsight 80/Oct 31-Nov 2, 2011]

One guy that didn’t seem happy about the death of Gaddafi (or is it Gadhafi?) last week was Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chavez, who called him a “martyr”. Is Chavez just being a chav? Or is his defiant behaviour aimed at ensuring the success of his revolution and bringing freedom and justice to his people?

Actually the fascis–I mean fascinating Mr. Chavez may be just a couple of years from death himself. Reportedly one of his former doctors, Salvador Navarrete, has said the president has an aggressive cancer in his pelvic region. Predictably, that doctor has now been forced to leave Venezuela.

Ever the showman, Mr. Chavez did not let it stop him from shaking his pelvis in public to celebrate his 57th birthday. Chavez has often sung and danced on his own six-hour weekly television show to entertain the masses. However, when it comes to opposition TV, there’s not so much freedom–despite the fact that Chavez was once awarded the Al-Qadhafi International Prize for Human Rights (maybe THAT’S the right spelling, even if no one else used it).

There is only one remaining opposition TV station in Venezuela. Last week that station was fined the equivalent of over $2 million for allegedly breaking broadcasting rules. Also last week, an opposition candidate for the 2012 presidential election, Leopoldo Lopez, was barred from holding office till 2014. Well, at least he hasn’t yet been forced into exile like that doctor; or Chavez’s main opponent in the last election, Manuel Rosales, who fled in 2009.

The regional Inter-American Court of Human Rights had ordered Venezuela to stop violating Mr. Lopez’s rights and let him run for office. However, the Venezuelan Supreme Court found a brilliant solution: it allowed him to run, but upheld the bar on him HOLDING office; which means even if Lopez were to win the presidential election he could not be president. For good measure, the Venezuelan court did its best impression of a mouthpiece by accusing the human rights court of acting “as if it were a colonial power”.

So Chavez continues his crusade to shut everyone’s mouth but his own (which as we’ve seen may be open for up to six hours at a stretch). Yet has he justified his talk with action? Has he improved his countrymen’s lives?

The Venezuelan government ensures that everyone receives basic food items. Literacy is high. Access to health services has increased, though the system is inefficient. Also, prices have risen while production has fallen. Poverty and unemployment are widespread. The crime rate is now among the world’s highest. The government hopes to solve most problems through further nationalization. It is also increasing its debt as fast as possible, planning to spend huge amounts in preparation for next year’s election.

Such borrowing would be impossible if Venezuela didn’t have lots and lots of oil: so much, in fact, that petrol is sold more cheaply than water to its own citizens. But if those beastly imperialists abroad were to start paying lower prices too, then the economy would be in serious trouble.

[In Hindsight 79/Oct 24-26, 2011]

Ukraine once had a prime minister who made ‘you crane’ your neck for a look at her. Yulia Tymoshenko, who has in the past been called the world’s most beautiful politician, is no longer a minister nor in her prime–but still looks better than most current women leaders (which isn’t saying much–have you seen pictures of Pratibha Patel?). I wonder, though, what seven years of prison food might do to her appearance–because that’s what she was sentenced to last week.

Remember the famous Orange Revolution in the Ukraine? In 2004, Ms. Tymoshenko led that revolution, along with Viktor Yushchenko, after a fraudulent election in which Viktor Yanukovich had been declared elected. The country’s corrupt leadership was forced to change the political and electoral system, and after a fresh election Mr. Yushchenko became president with Ms. Tymoshenko as his prime minister.

But revolutionaries love to fight: if there’s no one else to do it with, they starting fighting with each other. In late 2005 Yushchenko decided to dump Tymoshenko and her whole cabinet. Then in 2006 there was another election in which Yushchenko did much worse than Tymoshenko. So he had only one option left.

Politics makes strange bedfellows. Yushchenko formed a coalition with Yanukovich, the bad guy of the Orange Revolution whom Yushchenko and Tymoshenko had overthrown. The joint Viktors then ensured that Ukrainian corruption continued.

In 2007 Yushchenko and Yanokovich unsurprisingly turned on each other, and yet another election followed after which Yushchenko got back in the sack with Tymoshenko who became prime minister again. This lasted till 2010 when the wheel turned full circle (that’s what a ‘revolution’ means, after all: its spokesmen are but spokes in it) and the original villain, Yanukovich, took the wheel once more.

Mr. Yanukovich decided that the safest place for Ms. Tymoshenko was jail. In a court case that was more error than trial, she was sentenced to seven years behind bars, and barred from politics.

Whom should we be supporting in this fight? Well, save your tears. It would be sexist to say only men can countenance corruption. She’s one of those rich oligarchs who, with her husband, made money through chaotic post-Soviet privatizations, and may not be a saint. Her former business partner Pavlo Lazarenko, another ex-prime minister, is cooling his zhopa in a U.S. prison for extortion, money laundering and fraud.

Yet somehow I would still prefer to see her in power than either Yanukovich or Yushchenko, who has that pockmarked look which reminds me less of the Orange Revolution than of Agent Orange (and indeed he got his orange-peel skin after being famously poisoned by a deadly contaminant of the latter–though I really don’t think that’s where his revolution took its name from).

Europe, of course, is comparing Yanukovich to Stalin, and protesting against the braided Ms. Tymoshenko’s sentencing. But sadly, despite all the hot air it’s sending in their direction, it’s too dependent on hot gas flowing in the opposite direction through Ukrainian pipelines to want to upbraid them too much and risk another explosion.

[In Hindsight 78/Oct 17-19, 2011]

The home of international finance is under siege. Supporters of the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protests in New York might say the protestors are defending democracy; whereas critics might suggest they should get themselves an occupation–as in gainful employment. Who’s right?

That depends, of course, on what the protestors want. Some of them genuinely believe the ways of Wall Street are evil and the rich are ruining America; while others may be there for the free pizza (called OccuPie), supplied by Liberatos Pizza on Cedar Street and paid for by rich well-wishers in America and abroad. The pizza is topped with a ‘no’ symbol made of pepperoni slices. (So when ordering, make sure you know the difference between ‘no pepperoni’ and ‘pepperoni no’.)

Whether they’re hungry for change or just hungry, it’s a major event. Among the protest signs was one reading ‘Arab Spring, European Summer, American Fall’. But whether or not this heralds the fall of America, it’s spreading to other cities.

For those who have been ignorantly (if productively) walled up in their offices, basically what’s been happening is that protestors gathered at Zuccotti Park near New York’s financial district on September 17. Usually what follows in such cases is that if it’s a public park the police remove protestors who don’t have permits; or if it’s a private place the owners can have them removed. However Zuccotti Park exists in that twilight zone of ‘privately owned public space’ or POPS, required to remain open to the public 24 hours a day; so neither the owners nor the cops nor their pops can do a thing about it, and the protestors are planning to sit out the winter, not just the fall.

Many don’t go home at night. As tents aren’t allowed in the park, hundreds are sleeping in bags and blankets. Microphones aren’t allowed either, so they’re using ‘people’s microphones’ to keep people in lower Manhattan awake. When one speaker speaks, those around him repeat his words loudly, and thus the residents of surrounding buildings don’t miss a thing. Drums, chants and protest songs add to the entertainment.

The only thing the park’s owners, Brookfield Office Properties, can do is try to trick the authorities into intervening as “sanitary conditions have reached unacceptable levels”. (You see, BOP’s POPS hasn’t been cleaned since the protests began.) But then you can’t have a good protest if people are venting their crap in working toilets instead of over the microphone.

How long will these protests against the rich continue? Well, provided there are enough rich people to supply pizza, food and blankets to the protestors, and the city pays the police overtime wages, and restaurants function like rest rooms to ‘do one’s business’ while attacking business, they can stay as long as they like.

Will they succeed in cutting banks and businesses to size while forcing them to hire more workers at the same time? Will the protests be recognized as the U.S. equivalent of the Arab Spring? Not unless they keep the pork out of the pepperoni pizzas.

[In Hindsight 77/Oct 10-12, 2011]

How many of us can say we have never felt like flogging a lady driver? Some of them are a real menace on the road. In fact a few of them drive even worse than men.

However it’s a different matter when you’re flogging them for the mere act of driving–because there’s always a small chance they might have learned to drive well. Last week a Saudi Arabian woman called Shaima Jastaina had her sentence overturned by the reform-minded Saudi king, after a court had awarded her a pasting of 10 lashes. (And I don’t mean eyelash extensions.) Yet many accuse the king of offering mere cosmetic changes in his country.

Ms. Jastaina had participated in a campaign called Women2Drive (gosh, can’t they spell either?). She believes women are equally well-equipped to drive–and not just because they have natural headlights. But the hardliners cried Shame on Shaima (instead of Justice for Jastaina), and the court ordered her to be whipped. The king then stepped in and put a full stop to her sentence.

The Saudi royal family has promised reforms such as allowing women to vote and become municipal and advisory councillors. Yet as you might have guessed, the councils have no real power of their own.

Whether the royals are permitting small freedoms to forestall a demand for greater freedom isn’t entirely clear. Certainly the threat of an Arab Spring in the Arabian desert has made the royal family sit up, if not spring up and make their reforms less glacial.

The Saudi government has, you see, helped to suppress anti-government protests in Bahrain; and recently hosted Yemen’s dictator, Mr. Ali Saleh, who enjoyed a four-month holiday recuperating after an assassination attempt before returning home to the driver’s seat.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia remains the only country in the world that bans women from driving. Why is this? Religious texts don’t forbid women to drive cars–not least because they didn’t have many cars to write about in those days (even if there was licence and debauchery). Maybe it’s a linguistic error, and people think driving cars will increase their sex drive or something like that.

Neither are women allowed to leave home without a male escort. Often this leads to them sitting with a hired driver, and what such escort services achieve I fail to understand. Some years back there was a fire in a girls’ school, where 15 girls reportedly died because the religious police wouldn’t allow them to leave as they weren’t presentably dressed in headscarves and robes.

King Abdullah has done other things like opening a coeducational university in 2009 and appointing a female deputy minister, besides allowing saleswomen to work in underwear shops so that female customers don’t have to discuss their bra size with men. But just as women depend on bras for support, the king continues to pendulously–I mean perilously–hang by the support of a very conservative clergy, whom he props up in return. It’s a tit for tit–or rather tat–situation, with needless chest thumping on both sides.

[In Hindsight 76/Oct 3-5, 2011]

If you travel 14,000 feet to the bottom of the ocean under the North Pole (whether because you’re a seal or you’re wearing Sicilian cement shoes) you’ll find a Russian flag planted on the sea bed. What’s it doing there?

In 2007 two Mir mini-submarines dove into the chilling waters, led by Artur Chilingarov, who declared that the Arctic and the North Pole belonged to Russia; and their flag was planted to support the claim. You might call this the height (or depth) of flag-waving–although the flag is made of rust-proof titanium and not all that easy to wave.

Last week it was announced that Russia would be increasing its military presence in the Arctic. The region has vast oil and gas reserves, and the melting Artic ice has set several countries plotting to extract its buried treasure. Vladimir Putin has predicted the area will begin to rival the Suez Canal. (I’m not sure whether he meant that many ships would start passing through or that the place would ultimately get as warm as Egypt.)

Russia claims that the polar region’s underwater Lomonosov Ridge, which probably contains 10 billion barrels of oil, is a Mir–I mean mere–extension of its continental shelf. It makes a similar claim to the Mendeleev Ridge. Canada and Denmark (which owns Greenland) are also digging up ridge bridges, and have claimed the North Pole for themselves. The USA and Norway, too, have filed territorial claims. I won’t be surprised if the Poles find an excuse to claim the Pole as well.

But have you noticed something about the names of these underwater ridges? That’s right–they’re Russian already! And speaking of Russian words, Mir happens to mean ‘peace’–though all they seem to want is a piece of the Arctic. When the Russians planted their flag on the North Polar sea floor, the Canadian Foreign Minister had responded, “This isn’t the fifteenth century! You can’t go around the world and just plant flags and say ‘We’re claiming this territory’!” But he’s probably (in Putin’s words against critics of Berlusconi’s indiscriminate drilling of wells) just jealous.

Then again, perhaps we should say to all these people fighting to extend their shelf life: in life you shouldn’t think only of your shelves! Has anyone given a thought to the plight of the poor Arctic seals and polar bears? Can’t we at least ensure they are given jobs as petrol pump attendants?

The more oil and gas we use, the more heating there will be, and the more melting of Arctic ice, following which we can access yet more oil and gas. It’s a virtuous cycle–except that at this rate no one will ever need cycles again with all the car petrol made available.

Apart from containing up to a quarter of the world’s untapped oil and gas reserves, the Arctic sea floor may hold significant amounts of other mineral riches. Let’s just hope it doesn’t lead to a (very) cold war between nations.

[In Hindsight 75/Sep 26-28, 2011]

Politicians have often, in the past, given people hell. But now the Danish people have decided to give themselves Helle.

Helle Thorning-Schmidt, who is to be the first female prime minister of Denmark, is married to Neil Kinnock’s son Stephen. The latter describes his present duties as child rearing, cooking and other housework. (He also works for the World Economic Forum, but evidently that job gives him lots of free time.)

Will the lady make a strong leader? The Danish author Henrik Dahl has called her “the weakest leader [her] party has ever had”. I do hope he’s not judging her in terms of muscle mass.

Long ago, a leader’s job was to fight with others (or yell “This is Sparta!” and boot them down the well–but we’re living in the age of Gerard, not Rhett). These days both foot soldiers and generals must employ the opposite extremity. Their task is now to work for peace and progress and all that boring stuff. Ms. Thorning-Schmidt will also devote time to keeping peace among her disparate coalition members. What else will she do?

Denmark is the world’s most heavily taxed country. In addition to high income tax rates Danes have to pay 25% extra for most products purchased, and 200% more for a car.  And now Ms. Thorning-Schmidt intends to–you guessed it!–raise taxes further. Whether her economic stimuli will work we can’t yet say. But at least she and her husband have had the good sense to evade some of those taxes themselves. She made a false declaration about the amount of time Mr. Kinnock spent in the country, to qualify them as joint home owners and save a bundle. She later described the misdeclaration as a “sloppy mistake”, but most Danes think she did it deliberately.

The poor girl has also been nicknamed ‘Gucci Helle’ by opponents for her taste in rags and bags. Here they should realize that without those saved taxes she might not have bought clothes of quite the same quality, and they’d have neither stick to beat her with.

The Danish economy has seen weak growth, but at least they’re outside the euro zone with no massive deficit. Yet it wasn’t my intention to discuss these details when I began this week’s column. Her designer dress and disarming smile must have distracted me.

You see, Denmark is a small country of 5.5 million people, and doesn’t really matter much apart from the pastries: but the point here is they have added to the number of women world leaders. The list is growing, though very slowly.

It sometimes seems that not enough women have the ambition to attain leadership positions. However, the good news for them is that as their ambition slowly grows, men’s ambition from the school level onwards is quickly waning. Research shows this has been happening in many countries for decades. The fact that they live in a safe world (with lots of stimulants to choose from, economic and otherwise) where you no longer must kick people well (or down wells) to survive may have something to do with it.

[In Hindsight 74/Sep 19-21, 2011]

Apple recently became the world’s largest company partly by just being ‘cool’. (Later Exxon’s stock got ‘hot’ again, but that’s another story.) Apple Inc.’s products are so cool that a large number of Chinese people refuse to believe the fact that most of those products are manufactured in China, because they think their own country simply couldn’t make anything in that class of coolness.

So Apple may not be as American as apple pie: yet Steve Jobs’ emphasis on image and design has helped take it to the top. The question is, will the company stay cool now that Mr. Jobs’ own head has become apple-shaped following a close shave with cancer, and he’s retired it?

In China, as in other markets, Western goods are often preferred, especially in the luxury and just-plain-cool-stuff segments. This is why there are lots of fake Apple stores in China (which are truer and more flattering imitations than the misnamed Pizza Huh or KFG restaurants that can also be found there–where presumably they cook your goose instead of chicken). In these well-faked stores, even employees are under the impression they’ve been provided their jobs by Jobs.

How long this will last, and how long it will be before the Chinese consider Chinese products to be cool, is anyone’s guess. One American product that has lost a bit of coolness is the dollar, more so after the United States lost its top-tier credit rating from Standard & Poor’s. This isn’t to say Americans’ living standard is poor: they didn’t scream “AAA!” upon losing the triple-A rating, but went on with their lives. Yet things aren’t quite what they used to be.

People do continue to buy the dollar, because everyone still thinks it’s cool and does the same; and there’s no alternative global reserve currency yet. The euro is in such bad shape that it may not even survive (and all the euro-zone banks aren’t worth as much as Apple). The Chinese renminbi has too many problems of politics, economics and pronunciation. A few people have suggested the rupee–but at the moment have little to back it up except a sense of humour.

So if America wants it can keep printing dollars and the world will keep taking them: but style must be backed by substance at some point, and things can’t continue in this way forever. Even with austerity measures, a catastrophe is coming.

A cooling economy isn’t cool. Nor will Western economies improve significantly in the foreseeable future. Eventually investments will head farther east. And one day, in addition to global warming, there will be a global cooling shift where uncool places and things will suddenly look better. Maybe someday we’ll be eating in Kentucky Fried Rice restaurants. Anything’s possible.

Here, it might be useful to apply a bit of ‘Eastern’ philosophy and say that material goods don’t matter much (especially if you don’t have any to begin with). That attitude always helps in hard times, if nothing else will.

[In Hindsight 73/Sep 6-11, 2011]

India has often been called a corrupt country with a prevailing Inspector Raj, where crooked officials take bribes for favours. What is the solution? The fashionable answer seems to be: to add another countrywide layer of inspectors to inspect the corrupt ones!

It’s been pointed out that this would be one consequence of Anna Hazare, the popular anti-corruption campaigner, getting his way. These new inspectors would have to be, by some miracle, infinitely more honest than the old ones.

It’s nice to see all the corrupt people cheering for the anti-corruption campaigner, howling huzzah for Hazare. Who among them has not given or taken a bribe, or evaded taxes? Contributing to the common people’s campaign and adding both glamour and gravity to it are Bollywood stars, politicians, businessmen, all with secret Swiss Bliss accounts.

Mr. Hazare says the youth of the nation inspire him most. And yes, there are none better than the starry-eyed idealistic youth to conduct such a crusade. But who are the youth of the nation really? They are those that have thus far only taken their parents’ black money and not yet made their own. Clutching their relatives’ cash they are relatively innocent, having perhaps only bribed a few cops to let them off for minor infringements, and so on. But one day they too will start making murky money with one hand while waving counter-corruption banners with the other to create a diversion.

The government’s anti-corruption Lokpal Bill is extremely weak; and seems better designed to punish honest people: in fact people wouldn’t be allowed to file complaints directly with the ombudsman. What’s more, everyone down to the upper bureaucrats has been kept beyond the bill’s purview. This might make the Lokpal a pal of the corrupt rather than of the common [italicize:]lok. On the other hand, the bill drafted by Mr. Hazare’s civil society activists is so strong that it would make the ombudsman an extra-constitutional authority. He would be above both the legislature and executive, not to mention the judiciary; thus effectively an unelected judge, jury and executioner. In comparison, even the other Mr. A.H. (I’m referring to Adolf) was elected in 1933–after his attempted beer-hall coup of 1923 fizzled into a mere storm in a teacup.

I’m sure that Mr. Hazare does honestly oppose corruption, even if ‘civil society’ gets a bit uncivil sometimes. And he could stand a few days of fasting to shed some of that un-Gandhian girth. But I doubt that he can solve the problem.

If he can’t, then who can? The answer, I fear, is: nobody. Indian society has become so corrupt that it cannot be saved–not in our lifetime, anyway. Or at least, nobody short of a dictator could ‘save’ it. Will we risk a ‘benevolent’ dictatorship? Probably not. We’ll see a few politicians and crooked officers being jailed for form’s sake; but that’s about it.

Right, that’s enough for now. If I meet you in a beer hall, we’ll discuss this further. Then if we can’t have a putsch, we’ll just drink to forget.

[In Hindsight 72/Aug 22-28, 2011]

Some people say Assad’s an ass; yet does the Syrian president have any choice but to keep killing people like flies? After all, he belongs to a minority ethnic group that is widely despised in his homeland: and if he were to stop killing now, and lost power to the others, they might really kick his a**!

President Bashar al-Assad belongs to the Syrian Alawite minority. A well-known political commentator once commented, “An [Alawite] ruling Syria is like an untouchable becoming maharajah in India.” Well, the word ‘untouchable’ has itself become untouchable now; and although I can’t recall any unmanipulable maharajahs, at least India HAS had its own president from that group.

Assad has tried to cultivate an image not of an Alawite leader, but rather as one representing the Ba’ath Party, a secular pan-Arabist political party seen by some as a possible solution for an ethnically and ideologically divided country where, as a previous Syrian president once complained, “All [of the Syrian people] see themselves as politicians, half claim to be national leaders, a quarter believe they are prophets, and at least ten per cent think they are gods.”

The Ba’ath Party was founded in the 1940s by a group of French-educated Syrians, and came to influence other nations as well. But as the French say, the more things change the more they stay the same, at least as far as human nature is concerned: ultimately the Ba’athists themselves started hating each other so much that Syria sent troops to fight against the biggest baddest Ba’athist, Saddam Hussein, in the Gulf War of 1990-91.

Clearly pan-Arabism cannot unite Arabs, any more than pan-humanism unites humans. These grand ideologies are usually propagated by Pan troglodytes (or at best Panglosses) who wish to loot the treasury while everyone else is sent from the pan into the fire, or ends up panhandling for a living.

Thus Bashar bashes on regardless–butchering thousands on his way. Recently he decided to hammer Hama, a west-central city where many protestors were shot dead by tanks and artillery fire. It was the harshest crackdown yet. I don’t know the profession of those ten per cent of Syrians who deem themselves divinities; but there’s no doubt that doctors, the people traditionally thought to spend much of their time playing god, are being given the opportunity to live out their wildest fantasies: reportedly hospitals are so flooded with patients that doctors are picking and choosing whom to let live and whom to let die.

So compared to other recent Arab leaders like Hosni Mubarak, lately seen lying on a stretcher inside a steel cage in court, Assad is doing relatively well. In Hama, he cleverly accused the citizens of violence and killing, claiming he was a peace-loving president doing no more than his duty by gunning them down to restore order. (Is Assad on acid?) Well, despite everything the protests against him have continued, and it remains to be seen if and how long Assad’s you-know-what remains on the throne.

[In Hindsight 71/Aug 8-14, 2011]